


interlude

by littlehyacinth



Category: Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon | Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon (Anime), Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon | Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon (TV), Sailor Moon - All Media Types
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-04
Updated: 2014-07-04
Packaged: 2018-02-07 09:58:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,078
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1894779
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/littlehyacinth/pseuds/littlehyacinth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>set after minako's death at the end of season one. some inept 13-yr-old sad girlkissing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	interlude

By the time Rei drags her away from the wreckage of Minako’s body and pulls her safely behind a snowbank, Usagi’s lungs have stopped working. They seem to still be pulling air in and pushing it out, but it’s totally beyond her control, deep painful shudders that leave her dizzy, chest burning. She can’t think of anything except Minako, lifeless and splayed, spine bent at a wrong angle, horribly and unbeautifully dead. Rei is gripping her shoulders, saying something she can’t hear: Her mind is blank panic and there’s blood in her mouth from where she’s biting her own tongue.  
Something cracks; her cheek stings and she catches her breath. Rei is staring at her. “You’re hyperventilating.”  
“You slapped me,” Usagi says, and there are the tears of reproach in her eyes, hot and familiar. She starts sobbing, ugly wet snotty gulps. Three of her best friends in the world are dead and the fourth has just hit her in the face. “You don’t care,” she manages through a wail, “you don’t care about them.”  
She’s expecting a rebuke, a furious string of put-downs, but instead Rei’s face crumples like tissue paper and then she’s weeping thickly into Usagi’s shoulder, soaking her sailor uniform with tears. Usagi is so shocked she actually stops crying, and after a moment of adjustment wraps her arms around Rei’s waist and hugs tight. Comfort a crying friend, even in the middle of a battle, even if that friend calls you an idiot crybaby on a regular basis and has been known to pull your pigtails. If there was ever a time for tenderness it was this one.  
They kneel in the snow clinging to each other until Rei’s sobs slow down and then she’s just there, taking long shuddering breaths, half in Usagi’s lap with her wet face pressed into the warm curve of Usagi’s neck. They’ve hardly ever touched before—Rei’s not a cuddly person, not like Minako, who is (was) in and out of everyone’s laps just as much as Luna—but they’re past awkward now. Usagi shuts her eyes.  
“I didn’t mean it, Rei,” she says into the other girl’s hair. “I know you loved them too. I’m sorry.”  
Rei gives a last, dramatic sniffle, and finally pulls away. She unsticks her long dark hair from her wet cheeks, wipes away her streaky mascara with the back of a white-gloved hand— _mascara_ , Rei loved to pretend she was so grown-up, with her makeup and her high heels and her flirtations with older boys—and settles her back against a snowdrift, shoots Usagi a grin. “You’re right, you know,” she says. “I should have kissed Yuichiro before I went.”  
Usagi manages to smile back. “You’ll have to do it first thing when we get back.”  
Neither of them mentions how unlikely getting back is at this point. Rei nods, sighs, slides over to Usagi and tips her dark head onto her shoulder. Usagi feels her face get prickly-hot, the way she often does when Rei’s telling her she’s a useless baby, or a lazy fool. Only Rei isn’t being mean to her now, just sitting with her head on her shoulder and playing with one of her hands, interlacing their gloved fingertips together. Usagi decides the heat in her cheeks is just because she isn’t used to being so close to her, this tall fearless fire-girl—who, she’s noticing, when she’s not yelling or kicking things or being a walking flamethrower—is actually kind of pretty.  
“I did love them,” Rei says, breaking the silence. It takes Usagi a moment to remember what she’s talking about, and when she does, the loss hits her again like a Youma to the stomach, sickening. “We had fun, didn’t we? I know I wasn’t the nicest, but we fought bad guys, and we did a good job. And fighting with you guys…” She sucks in her breath self-consciously, and Usagi realizes with bewilderment that Rei, the bravest, the most self-assured of them all, is _embarrassed_. “It was the best thing. You were the best thing to ever happen to me.”  
“Can I kiss you?” Usagi says suddenly, and then “Oh, I’m so sorry, Rei, I don’t know why I said that, I don’t know what came over me, you must think I’m so stupid, I’m still stunned from that fight, I’m—”  
“Usagi,” says Rei, “stop talking.”  
And then they’re kissing, and Rei’s lips are firm and warm, and Usagi bumps her nose hard by accident and expects the other girl to pull away in irritation but instead Rei opens her mouth gently against Usagi’s and Usagi can feel the faintest slip of her tongue, electric. Rei knows what she’s doing—sophisticated Rei, who hangs out in parks with college boys—and Usagi hasn’t the faintest idea, but she kisses back with all her enthusiasm, enjoying the feeling of Rei’s warm bare knees sliding against hers in the snow and Rei’s hands at the small of her back. In a moment of confidence she decides to try putting her whole tongue in Rei’s mouth, and Rei pulls away and giggles but it’s okay because then they’re kissing again, and Rei takes Usagi’s lower lip between her teeth and swipes her tongue across it delicately before giving it a gentle but firm bite. Usagi yelps and digs her fingernails into Rei’s shoulders, feels a shudder of heat run through her body and pool between her thighs.  
Rei’s laughing, pushing her long dark hair out of her eyes. “You’ve had a crush on me for ages, Princess,” she says, and when Usagi protests, “You can’t fool me. Psychic, remember? And speaking of,” she’s on her feet, peering unhappily over the edge of the snowbank, “I think the DD girls have recovered. You’d better get behind me.”  
The tears are threatening again, bunching in her throat and her head. “Rei,” she says, “please don’t, please, I’ll kill them and I’ll kill Queen Beryl and then I’ll come home, so you just go home ahead of me, I don’t want you to die, please Rei—”  
But Rei’s already shifting into her attack stance, hands pressed in front of her, ready to throw a fireball. She grins at Usagi over one shoulder. “Come on now, no-one says I have to die! You just let me take care of them real quick.”  
And then she’s moving, bounding over the snowbank towards the whir of approaching Youma, and then she’s gone.


End file.
